Jens Lekman Quotes

Everything I make starts very personally.

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.

In each of my characters there is a little of me. Not strictly autobiographical but a little piece of my soul.

Curiosity is the best motive for writing: curiosity about the world at large, or about oneself.

At the end of the day, I think that I'm making music for me as that 12-year-old kid in front of my boombox every day. I try to think about, if I'm that little kid, what would he like?

All of my films have been autobiographical - it's all I've got to go on.

You're always putting yourself into your work. There's no separation; it's just how you use yourself and transform.

I'm actually beginning to believe that there is something in common among all of my characters. I'm not sure what it is exactly. But I guess that something is me.

With every role that I do, I always see a little bit of me, a little bit of art and life.

Ultimately, I don't think you can be a character who's completely alien or divorced from your own personality. It's probably true of every writer - it's probably true of every filmmaker, every songwriter - that, ultimately, every character you create is a facet of yourself.

I feel really relevant and creative, and I don't think I would've made an album if I didn't feel relevant. I wouldn't have said a word.

A lot of our creative flow comes from a place of curiosity and exploration. It often feels like we're excavating and asking questions and not just giving answers but really just exploring.

As an artist, you keep learning. You draw out different parts of you.

I write about what happens to me. It's all there. I couldn't do it any other way.

If I'm writing a song for Karen Harding, I know I can't impose what I want to say onto her. I literally have to get into her headspace and think, 'what does she want to say?' When it comes to my stuff, it's the same. What can I write that's true to me?

All that I've done in my life thus far, all the poems and all the pictures, are not so much an intermingling of my life with art but a divine accident.

I really do pride myself on being able to help other people tell their stories and bring out the best in them. But I still, every song I'm writing, I still need to relate to it. I still need to find my true self in it, or else it'll feel dishonest. I mean, everything has a queer meaning as far as I'm concerned.

I know some people are like, 'I'm depressed, and I'm a struggling artist,' and that really works for some people, but that doesn't work for me. I have to be really happy, even when I'm writing my depressing songs; I have to come through that stage before I can write.

I consider myself first of all an artist. My work is about my creativity - why I create and not for whom.

If you're writing for yourself as an artist, you are always pulling on your own experiences.

All my collections are based on something I like or something I'm dealing with. They are always deeply personal.

Writing on 'Love' is so steeped in self-analysis. The writer's room can feel like therapy.

For me, filmmaking is not exactly a career. I was never in it for Hollywood or anything. My films are markers of where I am in life, where I am in my head. So that's what I'm working on, and I try to keep things in proportion - life and filmmaking. One feeds into the other.

Certainly in the case of having to answer questions about where a song comes from, it's a hell of a lot easier when you say, 'I've removed myself from it.' But they start from quite a personal place. They always do.

That's always the time to quit - when you have nothing to say as an artist and creative person.